The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair was viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further pieces including the bench and sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic craft; it was historically symbolic of social standing. At the historical royal courts there were important distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to cope with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior rank, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In its furniture form, the chair encompasses a number of variations. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have been adapted to conform to growing human uses. Due to its significant link with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when being utilised. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the several limbs of the chair have been labeled likened to the elements of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear function of the chair is to support our body, its worth is tested basically for how completely it does measure up to this practical use. Within the creation of a chair, the maker is limited within certain static laws and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had made distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the foremost task in the industries of technique and design. From these civilisations, particular mention should be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful make, are a finding from discoveries made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was created. There appears to be no notable differentiation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The main difference existed in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the form persisted for much later points. But the stool also played the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still around but from a wealth of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which can be visible. These curved legs were likely to have been manufactured with bent wood and were therefore had great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very solid and were visibly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of casts of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and apparently kind of less delicately crafted klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist time. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special brands of profound individuality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and works of art has been protected, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting resemblance to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, though, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, all three areas are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of a back splat had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited ability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) signify a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved only for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decorative elements are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks project a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more expensive examples would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won favour in several parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper products of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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